


hunted

by Fizz (marvels_ninja)



Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood and Violence, M/M, Murder, Private Investigators, but not always in depth, it's not very dreary it just is.. for a bit, more fun than it sounds, other characters will make appearances for sure, pretty fair amount of it, the good stuff yk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25637950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvels_ninja/pseuds/Fizz
Summary: Jack Kelly is a successful private investigator in Manhattan, and David Jacobs, so far, is a successful murderer. A fic in which Jack needs to clear his name, and David vows to assist him... for now.--this idea was solely created by the fact that jack is usually the "bad guy", and then how it'd be funny if 'jack kelly' was a cover name... and now it's a fic. wild how that happens.
Relationships: Crutchie & Jack Kelly, David Jacobs/Jack Kelly
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	hunted

**Author's Note:**

> hey gang! i haven't written in a fairly long time, but this idea was a little too iconic to pass up. the prologue is on my tumblr (jack-kellys), but all future parts will only be posted on ao3! thanks for reading :)

The only reason Jack Kelly had joined the NYPD was to make a difference. Get the bad guys, help the good ones, and keep his beloved city just a little safer. He’d moved quickly through the ranks- he was smart, decisive, if not a little reckless, and unafraid to be the first line of defense. He’d become a detective at only 25, and a good one too. He’d always paid attention to detail, with a strange background of arts and criminal justice, which made clues and leads stand out to him more than others. 

Quickly, though, he started to understand that the force often didn’t serve the people, like it was supposed to. Maybe he was too good a detective… because he quickly started looking into his own precinct’s history, all these covered-up cases, all this buddy-system nonsense that didn’t belong, that  _ shouldn’t _ belong in a department meant for protecting people. These practices were hurting people- officers planting drugs or evidence to boost their arrest number like it was a trophy, or looking away when excessive force was carried out on people just like him. The utter lack of write-ups was criminal, the strangely smaller proportion of white crimes versus the absurdly larger proportion of people of colors’ crimes, and the force used on those so-called perpetrators. This was what Jack had been working for? He’d been helping this institution, this unfeeling, cold-hearted machine, stay in operation?

How many, Jack had to wonder, had he done wrong? How many other brown kids were sitting in juvie or jail for something they didn’t do, or that wasn’t worth it? Because of Jack’s naivety of his own occupation?

No. He couldn’t do it, not with all this damning evidence right in front of him. Jack had to try and say something, do  _ something _ to make up for his ignorance. 

The conversation with his captain, an Eric Snyder, had been short and clipped. Jack’s piles of highlights from reports and filings were simply called “paper, boy, just paper”. What did Jack expect Snyder to do, act on it? Fire a quarter of his force for things they would deny, things Snyder himself had unabashedly stood by?  _ Approved of?  _ Snyder’s leger was even bloodier than his precinct’s- he didn’t have to let all of this shit, piles and piles of shit Jack had dumped onto his desk, go. But he had. He’d hurt innocent people.

And, consequently, so had Jack.

With a determined glare, he’d slammed his badge on the man’s desk, collected his things, and walked straight out.

That was two years ago.

After a brief...four months of self-pity, Jack shook himself off. That precinct was still doing dirty work while he wallowed in the destruction of his ideals. Just because he was out of that job didn’t mean he still had to watch innocent people get abused by a system meant to protect them. Jack was more than done with their rules, so what if he just...made his own?

With his best friend Crutchie coming right out of studying forensics, Jack started up a private investigation business. His name was a familiar one- he’d been a successful detective, so why not a P.I., taking cases away from his precinct in his office only a block away? The work was invigorating again, the protocol was looser, and nothing had ever suited Jack better in his life.

* * *

The only reason David Jacobs joined forensics in the NYPD was to make a difference. He’d studied computer science, medicine, and criminology all through college, and his fascination with the human body had led him to the police department. Doctors saved lives, sure, but Davey couldn’t find the confidence in himself to go down that route. At least with forensics, the bodies were already dead, and David could work from there to figure out how they wound up that way. And he was good, too- he could determine time of death, essentially how death had occurred, where a lethal instrument had entered, where it had affected, how fast the death was… all this before DNA and evidence was sent to labs. David was a genius in a genre of intelligence that was easily overlooked or unknown. 

About a year into the job, David was called over to another crime scene. He ducked under the yellow tape, and screamed, throat tearing at itself in pure anguish.

Esther and Mayer Jacobs laid in an apartment that wasn’t theirs, dead, stabbed through their stomachs.

David knew better than to let his tears land on any evidence, exiting the building to let his tears flow. The memory was hazy now, but he knew he went home, not having done forensics that day. Someone else had determined that it’d be too hard on him.

And then he was taken off the case. David could not believe it. Who would work the hardest on this case, he argued with his superior, besides their own son, who wanted nothing more than to arrest who had destroyed his life- his siblings’ lives?

He had been livid, staying in spite for hours at the morgue to examine, painfully, his parents’ bodies. He’d been more livid when he’d made some deductions the forensics team assigned hadn’t come up with. The entry wounds on his parents were much to exact for a sudden attack, strangely deep on both, too, which would be unlikely since there were two of them and one would react to the other being attacked...he’d think one of them would have been a tiny bit more jagged, a little messier, than the other, at the very least. They had to have been drugged beforehand, there was no other way.

Not an ounce of this had been on the report. Not a single ounce of effort had been put in, their deaths cast off as if they didn’t matter. Wasn’t this a police precinct? Wasn’t this the entire  _ job? _

He’d laid into his superior, David had to admit. It’d been rather ugly, with David practically hissing like a snake at how disturbing and, to quote him, “fucked up these practices were”. How they didn’t even care two people were dead, and, no, he was  _ not _ being too emotional, his parents had been fucking killed.

David had left the room with his badge dropped on the floor. The precinct’s resident forensics genius had quit, and he planned to do the opposite of return.

He’d been drunk when he thought of it, but the next day the idea had still been too clear to push away. His parents certainly weren’t the first, they couldn’t be. There had to be other more difficult cases that the NYPD simply… gave up on after a while, right?

...What if he tested that theory?

Of course, he’d research his target. He’d make sure their criminal history was actually criminal, not some drug offense or anything in that sense- he wouldn’t kill an innocent. Hell, David would even leave a note to make it easier for them. 

He waited a month. Bought a gun sometime in the middle of those thirty days. A silencer a few days after. Showing up at his soon-to-be victim’s apartment had been much too easy. He’d pinged their phone when they’d ordered takeout, and delivered it himself, along with a bullet through their chest. David cleaned up his own crime scene, expertly, of course, left the note, and deleted his search history in depth. 

He’d taken his time picking out a name to use. Nothing too extravagant, of course. Depending on what or from what he chose, clues could lead more toward him. It had to be simple, disturbingly fake, and catchy. Something that rolled off the tongue.

_ “ **Jack Kelly washes his hands of this. This is on you.** ” _ , he wrote. 

David had always liked the name Jack- a protagonist name, really, in plenty of media. Spinning it on its head felt appropriate, since it wasn’t like Davey was the true villain, right? In fact, David… David felt like nothing had ever suited him better in his life.


End file.
